Innovation in Language Learning

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a common neurodevelopmental condition associated with persistent difficulties in language comprehension and expression, often impacting academic achievement, social participation, and emotional well-being [1]. This paper presents a single-case study investigating the implementation of “Olly's Adventures: The City of Two Languages”, a bilingual Maltese-English board game and companion mobile app developed through the SALTT-CITY project [2]. Unlike traditional therapeutic board games, Olly's Adventures integrates a physical game board with a companion application, allowing digital activities, audio-visual stimuli, language tasks, and game progression to interact within a single intervention experience. This connected design enables the delivery of targeted language-learning activities while maintaining the social and communicative benefits of face-to-face gameplay. The tool was designed through a user-centred, multidisciplinary approach involving speech and language pathologists, engineers, game developers, caregivers, educators, and children to provide an engaging phygital approach to language intervention [2]. The participant was a bilingual Maltese-English child diagnosed with DLD who utilised the tool during speech and language therapy sessions targeting vocabulary development, semantic organisation, verbal reasoning, morphosyntax, and social communication skills. Data was collected through clinical observations, therapist field notes, gameplay performance, and qualitative reflections regarding engagement, participation, and responsiveness to intervention activities. The case study explored the extent to which a gamified connected tool could facilitate language elicitation and sustained engagement within a naturalistic therapeutic environment. Findings indicated high levels of motivation and active participation throughout the intervention process, with the physical and digital elements of the tool supporting turn-taking, collaborative interaction, and repeated exposure to language targets. The board game format fostered meaningful triadic communicative exchanges while maintaining the child's interest in the language-learning activities. These findings suggest that connected therapeutic games may provide an effective and motivating medium through which evidence-based language intervention can be delivered for bilingual children with DLD. Furthermore, the study highlights the potential of combining play, gamification, and connected technologies to bridge clinical and educational approaches to language support within multilingual contexts and provides preliminary evidence supporting the use of user-centred connected intervention tools in speech and language therapy practice [2].